He brought Kalakala home, now he's cutting ties

Seattle sculpture Peter Bevis, who brought the Kalakala back to Seattle from Alaska, is selling his Fremont studio due to the bankrupcy of the Kalakala Foundation of which he is a major creditor.

Seattle sculpture Peter Bevis, who brought the Kalakala back to Seattle from Alaska, is selling his Fremont studio due to the bankrupcy of the Kalakala Foundation of which he is a major creditor.

Photo: Meryl Schenker/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

He brought Kalakala home, now he's cutting ties

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In November 1998, Seattle greeted Peter Bevis and his crew of volunteers as heroes as a tug pulled the old ferry Kalakala into Elliott Bay.

Hundreds of people crowded onto Pier 66, and swing dancers did a routine as the graceful old ferry was tied to the dock.

Bevis and his small band had pulled off a seemingly impossible chore: a successful three-year effort to dig the streamlined, 1935-vintage boat out of a Kodiak, Alaska, mudflat and return it to the city where it had been an operating ferry for 32 years and where it would be restored.

Today, Bevis, 50, is tired, in debt and thinking about leaving Seattle and the Kalakala behind him.

Bevis is no longer a part of the ferry restoration that he started but couldn't finish. After an acrimonious dispute, board members of the foundation he started to spearhead the work removed him as its president late last year.

Permanent moorage for the 276-foot vessel has not been found, and supporters have not been able to raise the millions needed to completely restore the old ferry. The foundation has gone into bankruptcy.

The boat remains tied to a pier at the north end of Lake Union with a big back moorage bill, but no immediate place to go. Bevis, a sculptor, has put his Fremont studio up for sale and predicts he will soon leave Seattle, perhaps to renew his boyhood roots in Central Washington.

"God, I'm mad," he says of the developments. "I still care (about the ferry) but what can I do?"

It took Bevis and his band of friends three years of work to buy the boat, float it into Kodiak Harbor and have it towed to Seattle. It took just over three years for the restoration effort to stall.

Fund-raising parties were having some success, but fire inspectors shut them down because the boat lacked two exits to the shore. The boat, initially tied up at Pier 66, had to be moved to Lake Union; port officials later turned down a request to permanently return the ship to Pier 66.

The Kalakala Foundation could not meet the financial requirements Seattle officials wanted before allowing the craft to be moored at Sand Point. A deadline to move it from its Lake Union moorage by the end of last year came and passed; without a destination, Coast Guard officials wouldn't allow the ship to be moved.

By the end of last year, the foundation's finances were tight enough that board members decided to sell the tug Ruby 14, donated to Bevis' group when the Kalakala was acquired. The tug, once moored next to the Kalakala in Alaska, had been made part of the legend in a children's book in which the two boats were depicted as characters.

The sale outraged Bevis, although board President Kevin Mason said it raised desperately needed cash. Bevis argued the two boats should be kept together, tried to block the sale and proposed selling both boats to a San Francisco Bay-area businessman. Mason said the man never demonstrated he had the means to acquire the vessels -- and the deal included direct payments to Bevis that presented a conflict of interest as long as Bevis was on the board.

Bevis said the deal could have been altered to redirect the payments, but the board wouldn't consider that. "The air was poisoned," he said.

After the board rebuffed his arguments, Bevis changed the lock on his studio where the foundation's office was and put barbed wire across the door, board members said. He later cooled off. But a few days later, foundation board members invoked a clause in its bylaws, removing him as president. They moved the foundation offices to a member's home and, in late January, put the Kalakala up for sale.

The bankruptcy was filed in mid-March, after foundation members said there had been no takers for the boat. By that time the boat's difficulties had been well-publicized and, said former foundation director Art Skolnik, donations dried up.

The foundation remains intact. In papers filed in federal court, it listed liabilities of $1.2 million and assets of $1.48 million. But the assets include what Mason described as a $1.4 million "book value" on the Kalakala itself, an amount Mason concedes is far higher than the price it's likely to bring if it's sold.

Liabilities include a $60,333 back-moorage bill. Dahl Tug & Barge, which towed the Kalakala back to Seattle in 1998, is owed more than $8,100, according to the bankruptcy papers.

Bevis is listed as the biggest creditor, at more than $872,000 -- money he took out in loans against his property to finance the initial part of the venture. He said the actual amount is higher.

Bevis and other board members said the old ferry can be made into a viable business venture, once restored. But political leadership -- and deep enough financial pockets -- haven't yet been found, despite appeals by Bevis and other foundation members to some of Puget Sound's wealthiest individuals.

One problem was that a permanent place hadn't been found for the boat before it arrived. Skolnik said that made fund raising harder. Bevis and others said there were plenty of volunteers, but local political leaders didn't join in to help get obstacles out of the way.

Bevis has shifted his attention from the old ferry and returned to sculpting. He's begun bronze casting again in the foundry he built at the east end of his building. He said he has a prospective buyer for his building on North 35th Street and the sale should give him enough to pay off debts, including money he borrowed for the Kalakala. Then he can move, perhaps to his childhood home near Peshastin or somewhere else east of the Cascades, where relatives live.

"By selling this place, I'll have the freedom to continue my sculpture career," he said. "I figure there's an old (abandoned) apple-packing building somewhere that can be my studio for a while."

But even Bevis' critics give him credit for getting the Kalakala back to Seattle, the first major step if a renovation is to occur. They predict the vessel ultimately will be completely resurrected. There are already rumors of another offer for the boat made since the bankruptcy filing.

"I didn't fail. The boat's here. Nobody got hurt," he said. "If we look two years forward, the boat's going to be somewhere, cleaned up, and all this (controversy) will be forgotten. All in all, mission accomplished. A good adventure."